Time Trouble
by bhut
Summary: Adventures of Helen whenever she's not bugging the ARC.
1. Chapter 1

**Time Trouble – 1**

_Disclaimer: Helen Cutter belongs to Impossible Pictures™. The rest of the characters are mine._

The First Meeting

"So, this is-" grunted a chocolate-skinned Maori giantess also known as Kuro (among other things), as she and Helen stood in the courtyard of the Temple of Artemis (one of the wonders of the ancient world), watching how a pair of eustreptospondyluses ravaged the Roman legionnaires of Marc Anthony.

Helen carefully talked to the girl. Having lived in the Roman Empire later up the time line gave her a rather decent Latin dictionary, but between the chronological differences and regional accents communication was still hard. Still, Helen understood the gist of it – and she didn't like it.

"Kuro? Our new 'friend' claims that she's Arsinoe, the _rightful_ pharaoh of Egypt-"

"Is this good or bad?"

"It has potential."

Exploring the New World

"So where are we going?" Kuro asks the much shorter woman as the dawning sun breaks through the morning's mists, colouring the walls and roofs of the city houses in a pleasant colour.

"Don't look at me," Helen shrugs, obviously just as unimpressed and calm as her occasional partner and friend. "If this was Jerusalem, then _maybe_ I would've been able to give you a tour, despite the chronological difference of several centuries. This, however, is Edessa, and it differs from Jerusalem as much as," she searches for an appropriate avian metaphor to better explain things to Kuro, "as, say, a seagull would differ from a sand plover."

"Wow, that's some serious difference!" Kuro notes, "and speaking of them, what will we do with the princess?" she jabs her finger at the much younger woman who is following them at a distance.

"Historically, I think Cleopatra and Anthony had her killed – but the dinosaurs came and ate their assassins as well. Want to resolve the paradox or let the multiverse take its due?"

"I don't know. The flock of pterosaurs seems to have settled at one spot, by the way, so I guess that the dinosaurs that they were following have stopped as well. Want to feed the princess to them?"

"Why don't we wait and see?"

The Second Meeting

As far as carnivorous dinosaurs go, a eustreptospondylus is not overly impressive: roughly six meters long on average (bigger carnivores such as allosaurus or T-Rex can be twice as long), barely higher than a man is tall, drab in colour and not too brave by dinosaur standards. Yet they are meat-eaters that come from the Jurassic, as opposed to the Cretaceous, and that is why they have a very important quality:

They can hunt in co-operation, including setting-up ambushes that are about as effective as those set-up by lion prides or wolf packs. And since they're quite a bit larger than wolves, hyenas or even lions, their sheer body power and endurance quite makes up for the lack of finesse.

"Dinosaurs two, Romans zero," Kuro says cheerfully, observing the black and gull-sized pterosaurs squabbling over the remains of the natives.

"No," Helen says, more thoughtful. "These aren't Romans; they were a local militia of sorts. They're natives." Behind them, Arsinoe is retching her innards into the Mesopotamian sands, once more.

"We really got to do something about the girl," Kuro sighs, as she looks over the dinosaurs' bird-like tracks in the same sands. "Any ideas?"

"The pterosaurs hadn't left."

"So? There's plenty of bodies-" Kuro trails off and she readies, instead, her monstrous "elephant gun", as the Jurassic carnivores, who had been waiting for them in an ambush, decide to charge them instead.

Taking Charge

A successful ambush involves an attack on an unsuspecting opponent from several sides, at least two, to be successful. The eustreptospondyluses did exactly that: two came from the front and two from the back. Though they couldn't see each other, they could _smell_ each other well enough and their instincts – and experiences – to co-operate if not perfectly, then well enough to form a classic pincer manoeuvre.

And then Arsinoe opened her mouth just as the dinosaurs prepared to charge:

"I am the rightful Ruler of the Twin Kingdoms! I demand that you protect me!"

Something snapped inside Kuro, something that had once, and twice, and thrice, and even more times, made English colonialists flee from her. She half turned around, even as Helen was readying her time anomaly manifestation device to deal with the other half of the dinosaur pack, and pulled the trigger on her firearm.

Thunder struck.

First (Proper) Introduction

"I am Arsinoe, sister of the late Ptolemy XIII, the deposited true Pharaoh of the Twin Kingdoms. And you are?"

"I am... well, the Greeks and the Romans call me a lamia, for reasons of their own, and my friend here... even I don't know what she is."

"Oh yes you do," Kuro said a teasing gleam in her eye, even as she cleaned the barrel of her favourite weapon. "You're just embarrassed to admit it."

"I am aware that you are monsters of Set, but so is my sister," Arsinoe says with a lot of bitterness, but little of fear. "Therefore, can we not make a deal for you to dispose of her and erect me in her place? I-"

"We're sorry, but we're on a mission of our own, and are forbidden to temper with you-" Helen speaks even as the time anomaly through which the dinosaurs had escaped (again) begins to close...and Arsinoe jumps through it, managing to land unharmed.

"I haven't dismissed you-" she snarls, before Kuro shushes her, and not very gently.

"Helen," the ex-anthropologist's partner turns serious. "We have _another_ problem..."

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

**Time Trouble – 2**

_Disclaimer: Helen Cutter belongs to Impossible Pictures™. The other characters are mine._

Shivering

On the other side of the time anomaly (though Arsinoe does not know what it actually _is_) the air is neither warmer nor colder as compared to what it was before, and the same can be said for the sandy desert that stretches out in all four directions of the world: it the same as it was before...only different. Dawn, in particular, is breaking from a different side of the world from which she grew used to seeing it coming forth – but more importantly, where is Edessa?

"Where is Edessa?" Arsinoe whirls to ask her non-human companions, only to see them already gone some distance ahead, their silhouettes already murky in the twilight of the morn. Clearly, they have their own agenda that is somehow tied with the winged black demons and their much-bigger land bound masters and she does not figure in it in any way.

Despite this being a warm and gentle morning, Arsinoe cannot help but shiver.

One's Fate

"You know," Kura is saying conversationally, even as she and Helen make tracks through the Saqqara, following the footprints of the dinosaurs, "when Gelloudes and her partner had accidentally brought me out of my—funk, neither they nor I had fully comprehended the consequences of their actions, especially those that got me here in your company trudging through these sands on foot."

"Oh, quit waxing eloquent," Helen mutters crossly, "and what's wrong with my company? We both know that the two of us are not the only people who learned how to manage the time anomalies, there's-"

"Yes, and most of them, us included, cannot stomach each other, so it looks like that we're stuck together for a while. Well, together with _her_," Kura thrusts one of her fingers backwards, towards Arsinoe, who is resolutely following them, but is falling further and further behind all the same, "I suppose, unless you have any ideas what to do with her?"

"No," Helen shakes her head. "I'm not a historian, not even of ancient history, but I definitely don't remember any Egyptian queen with this name. I guess that she was supposed to be killed back then, and now, well, now, I guess she'll die here, when the sun gets high and hot enough."

"Unless we do something about it," Kura rumbles, and the two time travellers exchange looks.

"By the Power of Ra!"

Amun-Re, the god of Pharaohs, is also the god of the sun. His life-giving rays fertilize the waters of the Nile and make the existence of the Twin Kingdoms possible. But the power of the sun is also the power of the Ureus, the terrible cobra whose gaze brings death, and whose power in that domain is second, perhaps, only to Sekhmet, the terrible goddess of war.

"She's pouting and sulking, I know that she's pouting and sulking," Kura mutters grimly as she and Helen pull their new companion along on an improvised sled. "She's pouting and sulking underneath that new parasol of hers, isn't she?"

"I know that you may or may not understand me," Arsinoe says from behind them, shaded not only by the parasol, but by their shadows as well (and Kura can cast quite a shadow indeed), "but by the power vested in my by the almighty Ra, once I am once more the rightful ruler of the Twin Kingdoms, I will reward you in any way possible for this kindness."

"It makes me almost feel bad about throwing her to the dinosaurs," Helen mutters quietly to Kura.

"Speaking of dinosaurs – I think that they've prepared yet another ambush: the pterosaurs have started hovering in one spot again."

Helen's eyes narrow and she pulls up her binoculars to check the pterosaur swarm out once more. "Kuro," she says finally in a very unhappy voice. "We got to _move_!"

Weapons

A typical horse-soldier of the third century BC tended to possess armour (breastplate, shield and helm, leg and arm greaves), as well as spears, javelins, sword or bow and arrows. Coupled with their horse-training, and their equally trained and manoeuvrable horses, they should actually be a better match to the eustreptospondylus group, ambush or no ambush. This time, the dinosaurs can be considered outmatched, as their natural weapons, and instincts, and experiences, can offer no protection against ranged weapons.

Sadly, there are a couple of factors that change that situation: horses (just as their masters) had never encountered theropod dinosaurs before, and to make things worse, the eustreptospondyluses have one more ace up their non-existent sleeves: their especially loud roars that further deepen the horses' panic and make them much more harder to control and manoeuvre, allowing the dinosaurs to close the distance gap quickly and employ their own teeth and claws even quicker.

The situation is shaping up to be yet another win for the dinosaurs, when the chrome-white light of a manifested time anomaly abruptly changes that situation.

"Well, isn't that nice," Kura groans as she sees the now-desolate funeral procession, literally speaking: there's a sarcophagus lying abandoned in the now-empty sand dunes, "please tell me that you were able to suspend them in a time limbo instead?"

Back at the Base

Nick Cutter had gone through many experiences, some of which – like Stephen's death – is downright terrible. And yet, staring in the eye of a chronologically displaced, rather hungry, and therefore _very_ irritable ankylosaurus is still the worst and most terrifying experience in his life up to now.

"Connor," he mutters into his earpiece, "get your device ready _now_!"

The static is the only thing that he hears, and that is _not_ reassuring.

_To be continued..._


End file.
